


heart hope

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Canon-Compliant, Chanukah, F/F, Hanukkah, Reunion, holiday fic, hurt-comfort, jewish tegan, love!! so much love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28121928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: Tegan swallows at the memory. Nyssa, noble and clear-eyed and bright-souled dear Nyssa, who had suffered and loved with more quiet strength than anyone Tegan had ever known. A glimmering idea, a memory of laughter and travel and warmth. And now she was in Tegan’s flat, wearing Tegan’s clothes, eating Tegan’s breakfast, sleeping gratefully in Tegan’s bed while Tegan took the pull-out couch.
Relationships: Tegan Jovanka/Nyssa of Traken
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	heart hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilydvoratrelundar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilydvoratrelundar/gifts).



Nyssa sleeps, curled up like a cat, on Tegan’s plushest chair. She’s dressed in one of Tegan’s cotton nightgowns and it hangs off her narrow body awkwardly, exposing a pale collarbone draped with a dark coil of hair. She has her legs tucked to her chest, one arm resting lax around them, the other pinned between her ribs and the armrest. Tegan, across the coffee table, puts down her book for a moment just to watch the woman breathe. She’s here. She’s real. She’s back in Tegan’s life.

A week ago, she had showed up at Tegan’s door, exhausted and hollow-eyed but standing bravely, accompanied by a drab UNIT official. Tegan’s initial shock and joy at seeing her friend was followed quickly by the horror of seeing her so drained, and the UNIT officer--and Nyssa herself--had to repeatedly assure her that she wasn’t ill, that she was just exhausted from days of space travel. As soon as she was convinced Nyssa would be fine, she stopped listening. Nyssa could have had the worst disease in the world and Tegan wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about it, would have grasped and embraced her and welcomed her inside anyway. As she let Nyssa in, arm tight around her shoulders to support her, the UNIT officer stood awkwardly in the doorway, clearly uncomfortable with a reunion this emotionally charged. Tegan resisted the urge to flip him off for intruding, then remembered he had brought Nyssa in the first place.

Once Tegan had gotten Nyssa settled in her bedroom--Tegan’s flat was too small have a guest room, but that’s what an Air Hostess salary’ll get ya--she offered the man some tea, but he politely refused, saying he had work to return to and a plane to catch. Quickly, almost mechanically, he briefed her with information he, in turn, had learnt from Nyssa. The situation on Terminus has been stable for three of its years, the rough equivalent of four of Earth’s. With no mutations, no new outbreaks, and over a million stored vaccinations just in case, Lazar’s Disease is a threat of the past, and Terminus is no longer a hospital or hospice but a burgeoning society of its own. Nyssa, judging that all was well, had bartered her few material possessions in exchange for safe passage to Earth, a long and arduous journey that had finally deposited her on the doorstep of UNIT HQ. “The Doctor wasn’t… reachable,” Nyssa had said haltingly, her complex thoughts dancing far ahead of her sparse words, “And I thought - of you.” Her piercing gaze was directed at the floor as Tegan made up the bed for her. “But for you I would be alone in the universe.”

Tegan swallows at the memory. Nyssa, noble and clear-eyed and bright-souled dear Nyssa, who had suffered and loved with more quiet strength than anyone Tegan had ever known. One of the closest friends - she was afraid to use the stronger word - one of the most insightful and profound people in the galaxy, Tegan was sure. Intelligent, with a regal demeanor and milky skin and eyes blue enough to drown in. A glimmering idea, a memory of laughter and travel and warmth. And now she was in Tegan’s flat, wearing Tegan’s clothes, eating Tegan’s breakfast, sleeping gratefully in Tegan’s bed while Tegan took the pull-out couch. 

Nyssa hasn’t taken to 20th century Earth, not really. Barking dogs frighten her, and automobiles frighten her and cause her to clamp her hands over her ears, and she still can’t look at skyscrapers or trains without a veiled perplexity. It’s not that Nyssa is emotive - quite the opposite, in fact, because she vests her emotions in the core of her heart and they rarely flash strong across her face - but Tegan has learnt to read her, learnt the significance of each set of her jaw and each glint of her eyes, each carefully chosen tender word. Traken was a garden planet, a paradise made manifest, so human cruelty in all its imaginative variety - homelessness, poverty, bigotry - shrink Nyssa, in a way. Slights and aggressions Tegan throws off land against Nyssa’s skin and stick like grime until her heart aches and her shoulders curl forward and her chin drops almost to her chest. She’s a flower not quite ready to bloom, still struggling out from under foreign concrete. But she is determined to stay, she said on the third day she was here. She and Tegan had gone shopping, picked Nyssa out some new clothes: pants and skirts, dresses and boots, everything. But Nyssa had still insisted on sleeping in Tegan’s nightdresses. They made her feel safe, she said. And for someone as strong as Nyssa… Tegan knows that might not be an easy admission to make. It wouldn’t be for her. She knows that Nyssa doesn’t operate on the same emotional register humans do, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel. Reluctance and grace come easily to her. Strength and flexibility have been acquired, but steadfastness was always built-in.

Tegan chastises herself for her earlier thought. ‘Flower struggling to bloom’ isn’t the right metaphor for Nyssa, and never has been. Nyssa is stronger than that. Nyssa is indestructible. More unbelievably, Nyssa is _here_.

Like a star blazing down from the sky, like moonlight filtering through disjointed rafters of a half-destroyed temple, she had shown up again on the first night of Hanukkah. It was now the eighth and final night, and it had finally sunk in that Nyssa wasn’t going anywhere. And even to Tegan, who celebrated what she felt like and never been particularly religious, it felt like a miracle, a bizarre gift, to have her. To watch the sacred home-like glow of eight holy candles play radiant games with her hair, with the curves of her face. Tegan had missed her fiercely.

And she realises, in the quiet core of her that sits far below the bossy mouth and the confident stride and the easy audacity, that she still loves her. That Tegan Jovanka’s stubborn and resolute heart is still set and centered, and might always be set and centered, on the rational, ethereal Nyssa of Traken. They walked the stars together, comforted each other, slept in the same room, confessed their hearts to each other by turn. They had kissed in the library, in the console room, the chaste Trakenite way, with a peck on each cheek to symbolise love for both sides of each person, and the Earth way, more passionately, mouth to pink mouth, Nyssa smiling and breaking off with a tiny smile, dropping her head onto Tegan’s chest. They had been part of a strange little family. And perhaps that’s why it didn’t seem strange that Nyssa was here. Surprising, perhaps, but not strange, never strange, and never even slightly off-putting. It felt right. 

Nyssa’s eyes slip open. She blinks, realising she must have dozed off in the chair, and turns her pale eyes on Tegan, who averts hers, embarrassed to be caught staring.

“Don’t be,” says Nyssa in her calm perceptive way. “Don’t ever be. You have nothing to apologise for, Tegan Jovanka.”

She stretches herself out lithely and steps out of the chair. She walks over and Tegan stands and Nyssa wraps her flush against her body in a quiet hug, and they stand in the center of the room together, cast in candlelight from behind.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Tegan murmurs, and she can sense, more than see, Nyssa’s smile.

**Author's Note:**

> title from a song by the band Oh Wonder. it somewhat lyrically fits the fic!
> 
> (comments make my day!)


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